We present our weekly review of selected student editors and news analysts. In this week’s edition, they evaluate President Obama’s use of the bully pulpit, ask for more tolerance of unpopular views on campus, ponder the drawbacks of online courses and extol the virtues of majoring in classics.
- It’s a fine thing that so many international students are champing at the bit to attend American colleges and universities, but a columnist for the USC Daily Trojan calls for greater vigilance against the scams in their home countries that sometimes bring them here.
- In a recent speech, President Obama invoked the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt’s new nationalism in support of his own vision for the present. A political analyst for the Daily Iowan wasn’t impressed at all.
- A guest writer for The Exponent at Purdue urges his undergraduate classmates to get with it and support the Occupy movement. College students, after all, are among those affected by America’s huge disparities in wealth. A senior journalist in the Kentucky Kernal agrees, and argues that the Occupy movement more than vindicates the expectations of the Founding Fathers, who gave us the Bill of Rights with such healthy protests in mind.
- At the same time, an op ed writer for the UMass/Amherst Daily Collegian wishes that the Occupy movement on his campus would learn a little respect for viewpoints with which they disagree. If you can’t have an exchange of ideas on a college campus, then we really are in trouble, he concludes.
- It was apparently quite an experience to meet visiting GOP political strategist Karl Rove, at least as the host of a student radio program describes it for readers of the Johns Hopkins Newsletter.
- Whatever you think of Pakistan, it’s an American ally in a dangerous world, and we really can’t afford to make dumb mistakes there, in the view of a regular for the Central Michigan Life.
- Montana State University’s president is eager to expand online course offerings, but an observer for the Exponent thinks that the quality of education offered will decline.
- Although it’s still more than six months until spring commencement, the editors of the Washington U/St. Louis Student Life try to plan ahead with a list of possible speakers for the occasion.
- A classics major explains to readers of the Daily Princetonian why it’s still eminently worthwhile to spend time mastering Greek and Latin. The thing is, you learn so much more than just a couple of ancient, “dead” languages.
- Although he’s certainly no teetotaler, a columnist for the Brown Daily Herald is concerned about the prevalent drinking culture and its effects at his school.
- The FBI’s community outreach program towards Muslims looks like stereotyping and spying, in the opinion of a writer for the Indiana Daily Student.
- Most students at Grinnell College are in favor of “social justice," but many don’t seem really to know what it is either, says an opinion columnist for the Scarlet and Black.
